PUBLIC LIVES

PUBLIC LIVES; From Disco Floors to Skylines, Illuminating Life

By ROBIN FINN

Published: March 29, 2002

THE night the ''Tribute in Light'' was unveiled at ground zero, Paul Marantz, the illumination wizard behind the 88 mega-bulbs that form its intentionally evanescent twin towers, and ersatz referee between the dual, occasionally dueling teams -- two artists, two architects -- who first concocted it, paced uneasily behind the scenes. He was haunted by, of all things, dark thoughts. What if the flipped switch revealed a dim dud instead of funneling two commemorative fingers of light seven miles into the sky above Manhattan?

''I was filled with fear,'' recounts Mr. Marantz, at 63 a bit of a human light fixture himself, and an aficionado of strobes, globes, and spots ever since he built his first puppet theater at age 10 in a poorly lighted dungeon -- actually, the family basement -- in Union, N.J. In obscurity. Unlike the much-scrutinized Tribute installation.

''One of the great benefits of being in light is that if it doesn't work, you can turn it off and fiddle around with it until it does, but this thing was so exposed that if it was going to be a failure, it was going to be a failure seen all around the world,'' he says, rolling up the window shades to shed some natural light, his favorite kind, on 22 West 19th Street, headquarters of Fisher Marantz Stone, arguably the city's most authoritative lighting firm.

When a visionary but legally coherent blueprint detailing lighting specs for a revamped Times Square was needed in 1986, the city hired his firm. And when an even-keeled technician was required to translate the computer-generated Tribute theme into white light, the Municipal Art Society turned to Mr. Marantz.

''I realized at the beginning that what we were doing with this project was going to be a metaphor for what New York City would have to do eventually with its entire constituency when the time comes to rebuild,'' he says. ''It's clear that this idea is owned by everybody. I heard from strangers, from people in my high school class I hadn't talked to in 40 years.'' Mr. Marantz was jolted by the complex reaction to the ''purest thing I've ever done.'' He took no fee.

His fascination with the light and bright does not extend to his tweedy, muted clothing, or to his elocution, considerably more opaque than the transparent medium he works in. Ask Mr. Marantz why that poster of a gallery at the Rhode Island School of Design, a current project, hangs above his desk and he says it's there to hide an ugly electrical outlet on the wall, an instance of ''camouflage as subtext.''

He describes the Tribute as reminiscent of the Vietnam War Memorial, ''sufficiently reductivist yet enormously evocative.'' Huh? Please deconstruct. ''People find in it what they need to find.'' Eureka.

But Mr. Marantz is 100-watt, crystal clear when he states, with a grimace, his objection to prolonging the Tribute -- it's due to be extinguished April 13 in deference to migrating birds, fiscal concerns (it costs $10,000 a month to light), and logistics (much of the equipment was borrowed). Likewise he opposes sending the phantom towers on a national tour.

''A dreadful idea,'' he says. ''It belongs at ground zero, and it belongs there now. It was the right thing that this project was obliged to be temporary.''

MR. MARANTZ lighted Studio 54 in its heyday, the made-over Grand Central Terminal, Carnegie Hall and the Rainbow Room, and gets a visible kick out of his industry nickname. ''They like to call me the Prince of Darkness,'' he says. Not that he's a night owl. No discos for him; he's strictly a symphony man -- his first big project with a partner, Jules Fisher, was the Minnesota Orchestra Hall 30 years ago. But Mr. Marantz is a flexible talent: from the Tribute, he is off to Qatar to light the Museum of Islamic Arts, designed by I. M. Pei, and he sees nothing untoward about his professional flirtation with Studio 54.

''As sacred as this might be,'' he says of the Tribute, ''Studio 54 was as profane as it could be.''

Ever the ''nerd,'' he even debated including the club in the firm's brochure, worried that it might alienate his daytime clients. ''Then the phone starts ringing and it's them wanting to know if I can get them into the club.''

Despite his fascination with light, he and his wife, a therapist, inhabit an Arts and Crafts house in Maplewood, N.J., a dark-wooded Gustav Stickley design so internally Gothic it took 10 years to figure out how to illuminate it.

''Our babysitters always used to complain there wasn't enough light to read by. Now you can read in my living room,'' he says. ''But the most important thing about light, you know, is dark: without that contrast, light means nothing.''

On Sept. 11, he was en route to the airport, headed to Los Angeles for a meeting on the firm's design for the San Jose Civic Center, when news from the World Trade Center sent him home. From his hilltop in Maplewood, he watched smoke billow over Lower Manhattan. For a week, he could not work, too obsessed with thoughts of vulnerability to summon any creativity. But when the Municipal Art Society called, he wanted in even if the idea for the Tribute did not originate with him.

''When this thing finishes, it won't end anything for anybody, but I think it has helped people, and sort of to my surprise, it was a help to me. It made me feel like I could somehow get my arms around it, what happened. It got me going again.''